A recent study has shown results that, Bangladesh has been ranked 3rd as one of the most agriculturally digitized countries in the South Asian region. The government of Bangladesh has been taking initiatives with the help of ICT to include public services in the mix. This has played an important role to make progress in the digital field.
Bangladesh 3rd most agriculturally digitalized in South Asia Study
The initiatives taken by the government to utilize ICT (information and communication technology) and make public services more accessible has proved to me more helpful. This was a massive contribution that made Bangladesh push forward in the ADI (Agriculture Digitalization Index) of World Bank. The country overall earned in the ADI a great score of 53.2 out of 100.
The country also made progress by enabling non-digital environments. This has helped with quicker access to markets and improvement in electricity coverage. In the recently published book- “What’s Cooking: Digital Transformation of the Agrifood System”, the scoring and ranks can be observed. Only countries like India and Sri Lanka are ahead in this field than Bangladesh in the South Asian region.
It was noted in the book where the World Bank stated,
“the index is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather serves as an entry point into identifying key foundational strengths and weaknesses for the enabling environment for digital agriculture development, and its contribution to agricultural transformation.”
The evaluation of ADI (Agriculture Digitalization Index) included the Agrifood digital transformation of 150 countries. It was measured by these three sub-indexes: Digital Affordability, Digital Agriculture Availability, and Non-digital Enabling Environment. Bangladesh scored in- Digital Affordability: 46.3; Digital Agriculture Availability: 41; and Non-digital Enabling Environment: 72.4, which is the highest.
Bangladesh has a total of 99.4% farmland coverage of 2G cell phone, 52.7% of 3G coverage. A mere 0.1% of the country’s farmland has 4G coverage- According to the calculations of the World Bank.
Sri Lanka ranked on the top of the index among the South Asian region with a score of 80.6. India clamed the 2nd spot with a score of 62.3. Bhutan scored 49.6, Nepal scored 49, Pakistan scored 46.2 and Afghanistan scored 38.3. Maldives was not included in this index ranking. The overall top ranked and score earning country was Switzerland (91.7)